From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 09:44:11 MDT
On Mon, 8 Apr 2002, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Please point me to a peer-reviewed article that considers the Dr
> Strangelove position on the survivability of nuclear war and it
> barely being a blip in the march of progress.
It looks like the controversy may have gotten started by
Tony Rothman in "Science a la Mode: Physical Fashions and Fictions"
Review: http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1990/j90/j90reviews.html
The essay was "A Memoir of Nuclear Winter".
The reviewer found it problematic but didn't say it was
completely without merit. However the BAS isn't where I'd
expect to find an unbiased review.
An even older academic work is:
Nuclear Winter: THe State of the Science, by George F. Carrier
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309036925/html/136.html
Then of course there is "Nuclear War Survival Skills"
http://www.oism.org/nwss/
that discusses some of the myths here:
http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p912.htm
and lists Nuclear Winter as discredited (but they also may
have a biased agenda).
A paper I suspect is peer reviewed is:
Published in Science and Public Policy, Vol. 15, No. 5, October 1988, pp. 321-334.
Nuclear winter: science and politics by Brian Martin
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/88spp.html
It appears to be an extensive review circa 1988.
One of the more recent articles
NUCLEAR WINTER REVISITED by Dr. Alan Phillips, October 2000
http://www.peace.ca/nuclearwinterrevisited.htm
seems to suggest that more studies are needed.
The Google Directory seems to have at one time had a Nuclear Winter
page but I can't find it now. You might be able to find it
in the web page archival system.
> I think you are quite aware that some plagues, not to mention a
> nano weapon, act very rapidly making a "few years" MUCH too late.
Yes, for some. But I know they are testing certain anti-virals against
smallpox currently (that hasn't been done extensively previously) because
the bug had been "eradicated". We do seem to have an effective anthrax
toxin anti-toxin. And history shows that with modern medical knowledge
and epidemiology is fairly effective at containing the bugs we have
encountered to date (I'll note that Bush has put the Russians on notice
today that they aren't living up to their commitments under the bio/chemico-
weapons treaties).
One should carefully differentiate between existing bioagents, bioagents
terrorists might develop, and nanoagents. At least for existing bioagents
Nature seems to have done a moderately good job of giving us a fighting
chance. The development of novel agents is something that requires
more technology and information than is available to most terrorist
organizations. Though the gap is shrinking.
> Declared by whom?
Presumably the leaders of a country can declare a national emergency
and coopt the resources. I'm not completely sure but I suspect that
the laws in most countries allow officials to take your car, house,
etc. in national emergencies. (Someone correct me if this is way
off base -- it may vary from country to country).
> NO. Too easy for existing powers to maintain control and stifle
> any innovation dangerous to their castles rather than dangerous
> to humanity. Try something else.
If its open source code it isn't stifling innovation.
If it comes down to trusting a communist government or a rogue AI,
I'll take the communist government thank you.
> It can't advance to faster than realtime on a world-wide net
> unless it cracks lightspeed.
We may be misunderstanding each other. It can advace at greater
than real-time speed if it has more computing capacity than the
human brain, better algorithms for increasing its intelligence
or better protocols for reducing the communications bandwidth
requirements (the human brain is *very* chatty).
One of the interesting things about this discussion has been
that different animals may use different neuronal protocols
to get the job done. How do we know that timed spikes of various
amplitudes are the *best* communication protocol for "intelligence"?
More likely they are highly specific to the bandwidth capacity
of axons themselves.
> I will MUCH sooner take my chances with an SI somehow coming
> into existence on impossibly spread out hardware than on
> the certainty of massive repression of all of us if the
> government gets more excuses to clamp down on software and on the Net.
> Not that the need any more excuses apparently.
I'm not suggesting the government outlaw Kazaa, I'm suggesting it
adopt policies that promote it being *more* open and *more* secure
for relatively clueless citizens. I might also accept a regulation
that requires companies like BDE get a safety approval from the
government before they allow an application to be run on their network.
That is little different from what a biotech lab has to go through
to be allowed to handle radioactive materials.
If something represents a potential risk to society, you *should*
have to demonstrate you can handle it responsibly before you are
allowed to operate it.
Robert
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